Custom Tissue Partnerships

Organovo works with industry partners to create tissues for both in vitro and therapeutic uses. The need for in vitro tissues stems from the need for more predictive preclinical models, as evidenced by the increasing rate of late-stage clinical trial failures for both toxicity and efficacy (ten high-profile late-stage failures in 2012 alone). We work together with our partners to understand their needs and develop custom tissues for drug discovery, preclinical disease modeling, and ADME-Tox. These tissues can be supplied in multi-well plates or other formats, allowing researchers access to fully human, architecturally correct, functional 3D tissues—a revolutionary opportunity to test drugs on functional human tissues before entering clinical trials.

Scaffold-Free and Architecturally Correct

Our 3D tissue models are constructed of nothing but human cells and the extracellular matrix those cells secrete. Our thick tissues are densely cellular, with a micro-architecture that closely resembles in vivo tissues.

Biologically Relevant

Our 3D tissues look and feel like living human tissue, and they can be used to elicit a response that’s representative of in vivo biology in an in vitro environment. They can be handled like real tissues—for example, researchers can perform serial biopsies on the same tissue, allowing them to measure how the tissue changes over time.

Any Tissue Type; Any Disease

We can construct 3D tissue models using nearly any tissue type, for nearly any disease. We can start with a wide variety of cellular inputs, including patient samples, which is critical for rare disease modeling and genetic diseases. Tissue can be delivered in a variety of different formats, such as multiwell plates or larger blocks or slices of tissue, depending on need.

IN VITRO PARTNERSHIP EXAMPLE: HUMAN PRECLINICAL TRIALS

We have partnered with a top pharmaceutical company to create disease models for fibrosis across a number of different organ systems. The company approached us after a series of disappointments with the available in vitro and animal models for tissue fibrosis. We are collaborating with them to create a variety of different tissues with an inducible fibrosis model.

THERAPEUTIC TISSUE PARTNERSHIP EXAMPLE
We work with an industry partner on a discovery stage project in a single therapeutic area. The company approached us with some early concepts on how scaffold-free, 3D human tissues could help overcome therapeutic obstacles that have been very difficult to overcome with small molecule, biologic, or traditional cell therapy. We collaborate to optimize the cellular inputs, the architectural and design elements of the tissues, and to explore a variety of different surgical delivery options. From the first day of such a partnership, we maintain a focus on optimizing the reproducibility and scalability of our tissues.